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• VANCOUVER+acumen Presentation - Making an Impact through Social Finance

  Jocelyn Ling 3:54 pm on November 8, 2011 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: impact (17), impact investing (10), social finance (7), sustainable

  For the past year and a half or so, I have been involved with an incred­i­ble group, VANCOUVER+acumen. We’re a vol­un­teer chap­ter sup­port­ing Acu­men Fund by actively cham­pi­oning Acumen’s inno­v­a­tive model of patient cap­i­tal to ele­vate global poverty. We achieve this by engag­ing in com­mu­nity, rang­ing from infor­ma­tional work­shops, monthly salons and our annual case com­pe­ti­tion. As one of the found­ing mem­bers, it has been a great priv­i­lege to work along­side such pas­sion­ate indi­vid­u­als in this space and to con­tinue to cre­ate a world beyond poverty.

  

  I’m really excited to announce that I will be speak­ing at the inau­gural Cana­dian Global Impact Invest­ing meetup in Van­cou­ver on behalf of the group — shar­ing the acu­men model (both on a global and chap­ter level) to the impact invest­ing com­mu­nity in Van­cou­ver. The event will be held on Wednes­day, Nov 23rd from 6:30pm — 9pm at SFU Segal Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness in down­town Van­cou­ver. You can check out more details about the event here.

  Three other orga­ni­za­tions will also be pre­sent­ing at the event: Vancity, Global Cat­a­lyst Ini­tia­tive and Oppor­tu­nity Inter­na­tional Canada. Also, at the event, they will be giv­ing away door prizes ( 2 books I couldn’t rec­om­mend highly enough): Impact invest­ing: Trans­form­ing How We make Money While Mak­ing a Dif­fer­ence – Jed Emer­son, Antony Bugg-Levine and Banker to the Poor – Muham­mad Yunus.

  See you on the 23rd. Look­ing for­ward to con­nect­ing with other fel­low impact investing/social enter­prise champions.

   

• Catalyzing Social Capital Markets: 4 key publications

  Jocelyn Ling 3:27 pm on October 13, 2011 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: impact (17), impact investing (10), sustainable

  I’m not sure if I suf­fer(?) a bad case of Con­fir­ma­tion Bias but it seems (and this is a broad gen­er­al­iza­tion of course!) that there has been a rise in news, webi­nars, events or arti­cles about impact invest­ing and/or social enterprise. I wrote the post below for SocialEarth two days ago and it already needs updat­ing! From the amount of responses and retweets, peo­ple really love resource/reading lists! Hence, I will start shar­ing resources that I come across here instead of blast­ing out via email to my friends (I’m under a delu­sion that they love receiv­ing news like this — no one has opted out so far!).

  So 2 quick updates. Upcom­ing (free!) webi­nars on impact investing.

  1) How to Be An Impact Investor hosted by MaRS Cen­tre for Impact Investing

  Date: Thurs, Oct 27th 2011

  Time: 12pm — 1pm (EST)

  Key themes/questions (from event description):

  • How do you con­vert your moti­va­tions for a just and equi­table soci­ety or a pollution-free envi­ron­ment into an effec­tive invest­ment pol­icy state­ment that will enable you to make both pos­i­tive impact and seek the finan­cial return require­ments of your organization?
  • What level of due dili­gence should you con­duct to deter­mine whether a ven­ture is a good can­di­date for such investments?
  • What skills and exper­tise can you draw on inter­nally or acquire through exter­nal advi­sors or man­agers to aid in your decision-making process?
  • What oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges should you be cog­nizant of as you seek to re-align your invest­ment port­fo­lio with your mis­sion and val­ues, both orga­ni­za­tion­ally and personally?

  2) Impact Invest­ing: Chal­lenges and Prospects hosted by Jed Emer­son and Antony Bugg-Levine

  Date: Mon, Nov 7th 2011

  Time: 12pm –1pm (EST)

  Key themes/questions (from event description):

  • Roots of impact invest­ing, exam­ples of its prac­tice today
  • Chal­lenges that need to be addressed: reg­u­la­tions, cul­ti­vat­ing trans­for­ma­tional lead­ers, mea­sur­ing blended value, bring­ing in phil­an­thropic cap­i­tal, lim­its and chal­lenges of impact investing
  • Chart­ing a course for ‘blended value’ invest­ment strate­gies that make money while improv­ing social and envi­ron­men­tal conditions.

   

  *The post below was orig­i­nally pub­lished on http://www.socialearth.org on Oct 11, 2011

  Cap­i­tal­ism has alot to answer for these days. Mem­bers of this group range from ardent Occupy Wall Street pro­test­ers to a sense of com­mon vision that seems lack­ing amongst cit­i­zens. Today, we turn to four won­der­ful pub­li­ca­tions high­lighted at  SOCAP11  that has been cre­at­ing momen­tum to rede­fine cap­i­tal­ism and would be a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the pub­lic debate.

  1) Impact Invest­ing: Trans­form­ing How We Make Money While Mak­ing A Dif­fer­ence – Jed Emer­son, Antony Bugg-Levine

  This ground-breaking book should be your first choice to pick up to explore the trans­for­ma­tive power of impact invest­ing. The book explores an inte­grated alter­na­tive to tra­di­tional phil­an­thropy and invest­ing – high­light­ing the appli­ca­tions of impact invest­ing as well as its poten­tial. It demon­strates how it is and can be a pos­i­tive dis­rup­tive force. Per­haps the most inter­est­ing angle of this book is the usage of time with impact invest­ing, pro­vid­ing a his­tor­i­cal and pre­dic­tive per­spec­tive enabling read­ers to have a solid under­stand­ing of what the present holds. The authors ulti­mately offer a opti­mistic vision for what we can col­lec­tively achieve when our assets work in uni­son with our val­ues. As a bonus, I can assure you that the authors are as inspir­ing in per­son as they are in the book. No jokes.

  Fur­ther Resources:

  • My inter­view with one of the authors, Antony Bugg-Levine
  • The HIP Investor: Mak­ing Big­ger Prof­its by Build­ing a Bet­ter World

   

  2) Inno­va­tions Jour­nal: SOCAP 11 – Impact Invest­ing Spe­cial Edition

  I’ve been a big fan of Inno­va­tions – quar­terly com­pi­la­tions of com­men­tary, research and essays from lead­ing inno­va­tors in their field. There was a spe­cial edi­tion of Inno­va­tions for SOCAP11 con­tain­ing a myr­iad of per­spec­tives on build­ing the inter­sec­tion on money and mean­ing as part of the solu­tion to global chal­lenges. Below is the com­plete list of con­trib­u­tors in this spe­cial edition.

  

  My pick out of all the essays was one by Robert Katz and Brian Trel­stad of Acu­men Fund on Mis­sion, Mar­gin and Man­date. The essay firstly unwraps the def­i­n­i­tion of scale and sus­tain­abil­ity and then lays out the three paths to achieve this goal through mis­sion, mar­gin and man­date. I was par­tic­u­larly hooked on the dilemma pre­sented: what should take prece­dence when build­ing out a social enterprise?

  • “At what point do you evan­ge­lize your solu­tion to raise mission-based grant cap­i­tal or vol­un­teer sup­port to work on that new product?
  • At what point to you buckle down and sim­ply exe­cute on sales and ser­vice to grow your margins?
  • When do you approach the gov­ern­ment for changes to pol­icy that might help get that man­date to scale?”

  Fur­ther Resources:

  • You can obtain a free copy of their essay here
  • Bonus offer: Write an Ama­zon review for the SOCAP11 Impact Invest­ing Spe­cial Edi­tion and receive a free sub­scrip­tion to the Inno­va­tions Journal.

   

  3) Design for the Other 90% – Cyn­thia Smith, Paul Polok

  “It is a dis­ci­pline that uses the designer’s sen­si­bil­ity and meth­ods to match people’s needs with what is tech­no­log­i­cally fea­si­ble and what a viable busi­ness strat­egy can con­vert into cus­tomer value and mar­ket oppor­tu­nity”. Tim Brown, Change By Design

  This book is an extra­or­di­nary col­lec­tion of more than 30 design projects tar­geted specif­i­cally to design low-cost solu­tions for the world’s pop­u­la­tion that have lit­tle or no access to most prod­ucts (the other 90%). The sto­ries and bril­liant illus­tra­tions (part­nered with the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum) takes the reader through unique ways to pro­vide bet­ter access to basic needs and how inno­va­tions in design are often the most suc­cess­full in address­ing these issues.

   

  Fur­ther Resources:

  • IDEO’s Human Cen­tered Design Toolkit
  • Sup­port: IDEO’s mis­sion to design an end to poverty

   

  4) A New Foun­da­tion for Port­fo­lio Man­age­ment - Port­fo­lio 21, RSF Social Finance

  One of the fun­da­men­tal con­cepts that per­me­ates port­fo­lio con­struc­tion and the asset man­age­ment world is Mod­ern Port­fo­lio The­ory (MPT) – how do you max­i­mize port­fo­lio expected return for a given amount of risk by choos­ing var­i­ous pro­por­tions of assets. This paper is a great start­ing point in a call to arms to reeval­u­ate MPT in light of the impact of eco­log­i­cal lim­its and global impact of invest­ments. The premise of the paper focuses on: 1) Inte­grated Risk; 2) Selec­tive Growth; and 3) Mul­ti­di­men­sional Util­ity Func­tion to pro­vide investors clar­ity on the long-term impli­ca­tions of man­ag­ing a port­fo­lio that goes beyond a purely finan­cial purpose.

  Fur­ther Resources:

  • Port­fo­lios of the Poor: How the poor live on $2 a day  - Daryl Collins, Jonathan Mor­duch, Stu­art Ruther­ford, Orlanda Ruthven

   

   

• Design at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Segmenting the Base

  Jocelyn Ling 11:08 pm on July 18, 2011 | 6 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: BottomOfPyramid (4), design (5), finance (3), impact investing (10), innovation (8), social finance (7), sustainable

  I cur­rently work in the finan­cial sec­tor, specif­i­cally asset man­age­ment — and although the nature of my work doesn’t really focus on the Bot­tom of the Pyra­mid (BoP), I’ve made it my per­sonal mis­sion apart from work to be absorb­ing, learn­ing, writ­ing, design­ing, dis­cussing, read­ing, and (insert other syn­onyms of pre­vi­ously listed adjec­tives here) issues at the BoP… and some­where in that dis­cov­ery have found a sweet spot in social enter­prises and impact investing.

  What I have been draw­ing on my cur­rent posi­tion and my research on the side is an inter­est­ing per­spec­tive from both ends of the spec­turm: cap­i­tal­ist vs. social. I did want to share today (com­ing from this dou­ble ended per­spec­tive) is my prac­ti­cal ide­al­ism and thoughts on answer­ing the ques­tion of: How can I design/frame/create solution(s) that would help the BoP improve their stan­dard of liv­ing. (I was also inspired by this post on OpenIDEO on design­ing for low-income communities)

  This ques­tion has been one that has been asked over and over again and I would like to throw my thoughts into the stir­ring pot par­tic­u­larly in the area of seg­ment­ing the BoP.  This would be Part 1 of X and I would like to pref­ace my thoughts by stat­ing that the most impor­tant piece in this design is design­ing the solu­tion around the terms of the BoP — tak­ing into account cul­ture, resources, coun­try mentality/beliefs, busi­ness envi­ron­ment and pol­i­tics. Any­thing that we design or cre­ate to help this seg­ment has to be very very good and on their terms in order to be sus­tain­able ( although now I won­der whether this is even pos­si­ble — after all cap­i­tal­ism is a bro­ken struc­ture in itself. But I digress!).

  
  photo credit: Jametiks

  I have nar­rowed it down into three ways to seg­ment the BoP:

  1) Liv­ing Standard:

  Those liv­ing at the BoP can be sliced into three main cat­e­gories: Low Income — $3-$5 a day; Subsistence — $1 — $3 a day; and Extreme poverty — Under $1 a day. Often, this ecosys­tem is over­looked and are lumped into one. Most aid, social enter­prises and busi­nesses only affect the Low Income por­tion of the seg­ment as they pro­vide afford­able ser­vices and prod­ucts that require a finan­cial exchange. If some busi­nesses are really lucky, they get to skim on the sur­face of the sub­sis­tence group with enough scale and good man­age­ment. Some social or local enter­prises man­age to hit this sec­ond group indi­rectly through local com­mu­nity or sup­ply chain engage­ment. As for those in extreme poverty, lack of nutri­tion, finances and lim­ited edu­ca­tion make them the most vul­ner­a­ble. This is where gov­ern­men­tal relief pro­grams and non-profits step in. So how can we design social busi­nesses that tar­get all three groups?

  I know some busi­nesses hope to achieve this by scale, but per­haps another way to look at it would be to design into the busi­ness struc­ture from the start a water­fall effect of each group help­ing to ele­vate the next as they are being given a hand up.

  2) Value-Creation

  Another way of seg­ment­ing the BoP is through value cre­ation: con­sumers, pro­duc­ers and co-producers. By under­stand­ing the roles we play in the pyra­mid, we can then under­stand the incen­tives that drive each group. Income, basic needs, mate­r­ial wants. The first two groups are self-explanatory. How­ever, the third requires more than just busi­ness struc­ture. It requires a shift in our per­spec­tive and approach and con­sid­er­ing the poor as equals in our shared human­ity. We are co-producers and the BoP are no longer receivers of what we give them. This third value-creation group is per­haps the most impor­tant as numer­ous busi­nesses have stum­bled by fail­ing to under­stand their role as a co-creator of value. All too often, they see their respon­si­bil­i­ties end with the pro­vi­sion of a ser­vice or prod­uct but really, their role is so much more.

  When I was work­ing on the ground with an orphan­age in Soweto, South Africa one of the key lessons I took away was to always know where you are cre­at­ing value and to never try to be every­thing to every­one. You often find in brain­storm ses­sions that every­one always has a vision to be the hub, to offer every­thing — which is what I saw in this orphan­age. They wanted to help kids with nutri­tion, pro­vide money for edu­ca­tion, coun­selling and often you’ll find in devel­op­ment sec­tors, there will always be some­thing to do and to help in. Before you know it, you’ll be run­ning around try­ing to catch­ing all the falling pieces and won­der how you even got there in the first place. The key is know­ing where we can design value. It might only be in one area — and that’s ok!

  3) Need — Classification

  The final seg­men­ta­tion is by need, and really draws on the first two to set a base of what is required. Needs clas­si­fi­ca­tion breaks down into more macro pieces like: edu­ca­tion, nutri­tion, hous­ing, health, tech­nol­ogy. Because the BoP’s needs are many, a busi­ness who is seg­ment­ing by this sec­tor should enter a com­mu­nity by pro­vid­ing out­stand­ing under­stand­ing of value…and that value should be a hand up for sus­tain­abil­ity and empowerment.

  Seg­ment­ing by need also means that the business’s abil­ity to design the inter­sec­tion of social and com­er­cial value mat­ters even more. This is because design­ing needs, means part­ner­ships with other orga­ni­za­tions, gov­ern­ments or busi­nesses who might not have the same vision as we do.

  ***

  What’s excit­ing is that at the end of the day, a new future is slowly being designed and sculpted in both devel­op­ing and indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries explor­ing the Base of the Pyra­mid. Now it’s really up to us to make sure we’re design­ing it right with all the right pieces in mind.

   

• Dambisa Moyo: Why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa

  Jocelyn Ling 9:27 pm on October 18, 2010 | 3 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Africa (5), BottomOfPyramid (4), debate (4), foreign aid (3), Global Voices (3), Government (4), sustainable, world (12)

  I am so so unbe­liev­ably stockedex­cit­ed­hap­py­breath­lessi­nan­tic­i­pa­tion for this event. Seriously.

  I read her book, Dead Aid, when it first came out and it opened my eyes to a very dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive of aid, devel­op­ment and the finan­cial world. Her views are a chal­lenge and a strong vision on how to address the global poverty issue. Spread the word (and read the book!)